Now it is characteristic of play that one plays without reason and there must be no reason for it. Play is its own good reason.

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

I have a hankering to go back to the Orient and discard my necktie. Neckties strangle clear thinking.

The only test of a soul's salvation is its inward happiness.

O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! How inscrutable is the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a living and forget to play!

There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.